Impasse of the Weasels 鼬の困
2+picc · 2 · 2+bcl · 2 / 4 · 2 · 3 · 1 / timp / 3 perc / cel / pno / str approx. 6′20″
Program Notes
Impasse of the Weasels originates from the impressions I gathered during a journey in January 2025 with my parents and grandmother in Northeast China (so-called Manchuria or Manchukuo.) At the time it was a deep, tranquil winter and an expanse of snow covered almost everything visible, which reminds me of the writer Chi Zijian, who has written in this region many works infused with magic (the word “shaman” comes from Tungusic languages, spoken in Northeast China and East Siberia) and sentiments of dramatic bitterness, but at the same time every word she wrote is veiled in such a grand and white kind of silence. This style and atmosphere inspired me of how I set up the tone for this composition.
The Evenki flag is like an inverted Estonian Sinimustvalge, where sini- (blue) happens to be a conjugation of Sina (China), and the white part happens to be the Japanese flag because of the red sun. It seems that the history itself has prefigured this denouement that Northeast China, having a North Baltic temperament, was compelled to fight against Japanese aggression but has been ultimately unable to efface its socio-cultural impact. In the desolate rust-belt scenery, I was also able to see traces of the psychoses in the history, from the impact of ancient occultism to the mental disintegration, perhaps hereditary, of Wanrong, the last empress who was forced back to her native land. These became the cultural and emotional inspirations for the material of this composition.
As someone raised in the subtropics, I was acutely aware of the cold air stimulating my under-developed sinuses and insufficient amount of capillaries, which forced my attention toward the often overlooked mechanism of breath and the remarkable musical and emotional richness it contains. Another layer of the mechanism of breath (and olfaction) that I have been putting thoughts into is its mnemonic function. The Japanese writer Takayuki Kiyooka, in Acacia of Dairen, begins the ethnographic remembrance of his childhood in Northeast China through the qualities of breath,
The train goes north through Joseon1, crosses the Amnok2 River, and finally enters Manchuria. After Andong3, Fengcheng isn’t far. It is vast darkness outside, yet limpid, dry air comes in through the window. He breathes this air carelessly and catches that almost-forgotten odor of Manchuria. He thinks the air in Japan is a bit wetter, and the air in Korea drier, but both are plant-based.4
Gradually, in the Northeast cities within the ashen daylight that seemed suspended in the early millennium, I came to recognize a feeling that is not just oblivion, namely the loss of narrative, but the loss of history. During this road trip, I gained what might be called a curious experience of retrograde ekklēsis (evocation) having the privilege as a newcomer: through my prior reading of the ethnograph, I was able to acquire illusory and vaporous pointers of “memory,” while the olfactory and physical attributes of the air I breathed when I actually arrived entelechized those pointers. This time-reversal cartographic play of the anamnestic property of breath became the form of this composition.
The title is an allusion to Stefania Pandolfo’s 1997 book Impasse of the Angels, a Maghreb ethnograph of southern Morocco. The phrase “impasse of the angels” is a poetic imagination of Barzakh, the Islamic counterpart of limbo or bardo, at the decline of folk and mythological traditions against post-colonial modernity. It reminds me of the Mongolian director Gu Tao’s 2011 documentary Shen Yi, where shen means god or deity and yi means blindfold or obscure, bearing some resemblance to Pandolfo’s title. The documentary tells a story of an old Oroqen shaman who failed to find a successor of her tradition in the century where no one believes in it anymore. In Northeast China, Siberian weasels are considered spiritual and are worshipped, and I thought it would be a nice replacement for the angels.
節目說明
《鼬の困》源自我在 2025 年一月與父母及祖母同遊中國東北（即所謂「滿洲」或「滿洲國」）時所積累的印象。那時正值幽深而寧靜的隆冬，茫茫大雪幾乎覆蓋了目之所及的一切，令我想起作家遲子建——她在這片土地上寫下許多浸潤著巫魅（「薩滿」一詞源自通行於中國東北與東西伯利亞的通古斯語族）與戲劇性苦澀的作品，然而她筆下的每一個字，又都籠罩在一種宏大而潔白的靜默之中。正是這樣的風格與氛圍，啟發了我為這部作品所定下的基調。
鄂溫克族的旗幟，宛如一面倒置的愛沙尼亞「Sinimustvalge」——其中 sini-（藍）恰好是 Sina（中國／秦）的一個變格，而那片白，又因一輪紅日恰好成了日本的國旗。彷彿歷史本身早已預示了這樣的結局：帶有北波羅的海氣質的中國東北，被迫起而抵抗日本的侵略，最終卻無法抹去其社會文化的烙印。在那蕭索的鏽帶風景裡，我也得以窺見歷史中種種精神病徵的痕跡——從古老神祕主義的衝擊，到那位被迫遣返故土的末代皇后婉容或許帶有遺傳性的精神崩解。這些都成了這部作品素材的文化與情感靈感。
作為一個在亞熱帶長大的人，我敏銳地感到冷空氣刺激著我發育不全的鼻竇與不足的微血管，這迫使我把注意力轉向那常被忽視的呼吸機制，以及它所蘊含的、非凡的音樂性與情感豐度。關於呼吸（與嗅覺）的機制，我一直思索的另一層面，是它的記憶功能。日本作家清岡卓行在《洋槐樹下的大連》中，正是透過呼吸的質地，展開他對東北童年的民族誌式追憶：
列車一路向北，穿越朝鮮，渡過鴨綠江，終於進入滿洲。過了安東5，鳳城便不遠了。窗外是無邊的黑暗，然而清澈而乾燥的空氣自窗縫透入。他漫不經心地呼吸著，捕捉到那幾乎被遺忘的滿洲氣味。他覺得日本的空氣略濕一些，朝鮮的空氣更乾，但兩者都帶著植物的氣息。
漸漸地，在那些彷彿仍停滯於千禧之初、籠罩於灰白日光下的東北城市裡，我體認到一種感受——那不只是遺忘，即敘事的喪失，而是歷史的喪失。在這趟旅程中，作為一個初來乍到、坐享其便的人，我獲得了某種可稱為逆向呼召（evocation）的奇異經驗：透過先前對民族誌的閱讀，我得以取得種種虛幻而縹緲的「記憶」指標；而當我真正抵達、親自呼吸那裡的空氣時，空氣的嗅覺與物理屬性，又將那些指標實現了。呼吸這種回憶屬性的、時間倒轉的製圖式遊戲，便成了這部作品的形式。
標題化用自 Stefania Pandolfo 1997 年的著作《Impasse of the Angels》——一部關於摩洛哥南部馬格里布地區的民族誌。「天使的困境」是對 Barzakh 的詩意想像：在後殖民現代性的衝擊下、當民間與神話傳統日漸式微之際，Barzakh 即伊斯蘭中相當於靈薄獄或中陰的境地。它令我想起蒙古族導演顧桃 2011 年的紀錄片《神翳》，與 Pandolfo 的標題頗有相通之處。該片講述一位年邁的鄂倫春薩滿的故事：在這個再無人相信其傳統的世紀裡，她終究未能尋得傳人。在中國東北，西伯利亞鼬被視為通靈而受人供奉，我想，用牠來替換天使，會是個不錯的選擇。